FEATURES

• PWB Procurement
  Auditing a Fabricator
  Bare boards, be they prototype or production, involve distinctly different buying patterns and requirements, and with them, issues OEM purchasers should be aware of. What engineering and procurement should know.
  By Zulki Khan

• Program Generation
  Cutting Machine Programming Time
  Online programming costs companies a fortune. But how does one create machine programs and have them run perfectly once they get to the machines? This novel process instructs how to avoid repeated online debugging.
  By Edward Faranda

• Cover Story
  Simultaneous Acoustic Imaging and Surface Mapping
  A new development in acoustic micro imaging makes it possible to map component surface topography at the same time that internal features are imaged. Combining the methods reveals not only the anomaly, but the extent of 3-D distortion.
  By Tom Adams

FIRST PERSON

• Caveat Lector
  Two tech titans team up.
  Mike Buetow

• Talking Heads
  Jabil’s Tony Allan and Jeff Cavanaugh.
  Mike Buetow

TECH TALK

• Screen Printing
  Bigger and better.
  Clive Ashmore

• Better Manufacturing
  Don’t rip the rep.
  Phil Zarrow

• Tech Tips
  Where there’s HOP, there’s fire.
  American Competitiveness Institute

• Soldering
  Lead and Pb-free: All mixed up.
  Ursula Marquez de Tino

• Test and Inspection
  To the programming house.
  Stacy Kalisz Johnson

• Process Doctor
  What cleaning really does.
  Terry Munson

• Pb-Free Lessons Learned
  Cost of ownership.
  Chrys Shea

• Getting Lean
  Reliability analysis and process variability.
  Ryan Wooten

• Component Advances
  Molex’s Solder Charge Interface

• Technical Abstracts

DEPARTMENTS

Industry News
Market Watch
Product Spotlight
Ad Index
Assembly Insider

On the cover: It’s now possible to map component surface topography and image internal features at the same time. (Courtesy Sonoscan Inc.)